In connection with the final review of the largescale European research project SEMIAH, the consortium was hosting a final one-day event, SEMIAH Open Day, on 23 May 2017. Taking place in Visp located in the Swiss Alps, the purpose of the event was to present the research outcomes and devote a day to bring Demand Response into focus.

After welcomes by SEMIAH project coordinator Rune H. Jacobsen (Aarhus University), Karl Werlen, CEO of Misurio, made a keynote speech on optimal exploitation of decentralised energy systems. Afterwards, keynote speaker Professor Jessen Page from the University of Applied Arts and Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO) provided insights into Demand Response services in blocks of buildings in relation to the Sim4Blocks project.

During the second part of the event, the scope of the project and technical details explaining how the SEMIAH infrastructure works was introduced by Rune H. Jacobsen. Members of the consortium Pierre Roduit (HES-SO) and André Baier (Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES) presented the achievements of the SEMIAH pilots, providing insights into the installations, monitoring, and operation of the SEMIAH infrastructure.

Visits to Swiss pilot households

To demonstrate the SEMIAH system in reality, the open day continued with visits to three households participating in the Swiss SEMIAH pilot. Here, the attendees experienced different categories of the pilot households, demonstrating installations for measuring and controlling either boiler consumption, heating consumption, or both. Ending SEMIAH Open Day, the consortium partner EnAlpin organised a visit to a nearby hydroelectric power plant and dam, where the process and technology applied when using waterpower as a renewable energy source was presented.

Find more information about the SEMIAH infrastructure here and the pilots here.

In SEMIAH, an innovative probe has been developed for Develco Products’ External Meter Interface (EMI), allowing the EMI to collect real-time temperature data from boilers. The data ensure that cuts on the boilers do not affect the comfort of SEMIAH system users.

Attached directly to the boiler

By attaching the probe directly to a boiler with a magnet, the EMI collects temperature data from the boiler. The data are continuously sent via ZigBee to a gateway. In this way, users are provided with information on how the temperature is affected by cuts on their boiler.

Ensuring comfort levels of users

The probe provides an essential functionality to the SEMIAH system. Since the aim is to develop a system for implementation of Demand Response in private households, it is vital that comfort levels of the residents are not compromised. With the new probe, the system ensures that the boiler temperature limits defined by the users are kept.

The installation of the SEMIAH platform in households participating in the project's Swiss pilot is finished, and the solution is now tested in a real user environment.

Power cuts on water and home heating appliances

The first step of the test is to characterize the different water and home heating appliances in each of the Swiss households. The aim is to test the impact of power cuts of different durations on water and home temperatures, as well as on the load curves. The final goal is to identify how long the water and home heating appliances can be turned off in each household without negative impacts on the residents’ comfort.

Overall, the test of the SEMIAH platform seeks to verify that all the technical elements of the system are working with real end-users. Moreover, the aim is to get detailed feedback on experiences with the system among real users and to collect data about their behaviour.

The deployment of Demand Response in private households poses complex issues in terms of fulfilling both restrictions of the grid and flexibility constraints of the households. Researchers at Fraunhofer IWES have developed stochastic optimizations based on probabilistic forecasts, which consider these restrictions. This innovative optimization approach is implemented in the virtual power plant from Fraunhofer IWES (IWES.vpp) used in SEMIAH.

Flexibility levels ensured

In SEMIAH, households that enable an appliance to operate in “Demand Response mode” offer a particular level of flexibility towards the grid. Moreover, the households allow the SEMIAH back-end system based on IWES.vpp to take control over and schedule the run of the appliance. To ensure that the level of flexibility offered by the households are fully utilized, schedules are generated based on probabilistic flexibility forecasts. In addition, restrictions from DSOs are taken into account.

Continuous optimization

Another issue arises from the ability of the households to shift between modes in real time. With this ability, there is a need for the optimization to occur continuously and to satisfy both the flexibility constraints of the households and the needs or offers of the DSOs in real time. To solve this issue combined with the enclosed uncertainty of consumption and generation forecasts, a stochastic optimization method based on probabilistic flexibility forecast is used in SEMIAH.

The members of the consortium are pleased to announce that the SEMIAH project will be extended by three months. The extension allows for the consortium to proceed with validating the SEMIAH system in real end-user environments.

Since the project started in 2014, the aim has been to develop a novel and open smart grid system for the implementation of Demand Response in households. The past two years have included the main development phase with systematic testing of concepts and components, followed by system integration.

Project Coordinator, Rune Hylsberg Jacobsen, states: “The design and specifications of the SEMIAH system’s architecture, algorithms and interfaces have been developed. Currently, the system is tested in 100 households in Norway and 100 households in Switzerland.”

The remaining part of the project is dedicated to system performance testing. The extension of SEMIAH allows for six months of data to be collected from the full scale SEMIAH pilots, enabling a thorough validation of the system.

The large scope of Smart Grids poses the risk of too many developers and standardization bodies causing non-interoperability between devices and applications. Therefore, it is vital for the deployment of Smart Grid services in households to bring together as many services as possible. To ensure this requirement in SEMIAH, Develco Products’ gateway, which is installed in all the households, runs the open software platform OGEMA (Open Gateway Energy MAnagement) in this research project.

Flexible plug and play

The OGEMA platform is developed by the German research institute Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and seeks to support the full range of Smart Grid applications at the customer side with a single efficient hardware platform, featuring all the necessary communication connections. OGEMA allows new devices and functionalities e.g. in a smart home to be connected and added in a plug and play manner, making it possible to bring together different Smart Grid services in one system.

Two-way connection between Smart Grids and households

For SEMIAH, OGEMA is an ideal base for the integration of households in Smart Grids as it allows two-way communication between the Smart Grids and the households. OGEMA offers data models for “smart grid data” such as variable energy prices, metering data and control signals. However, the platform also includes standardized data models for control and supervision of devices inside the customer’s premises.

Opportunities for balancing the grid through shifts of energy consumption from high energy-consuming loads to off-peak periods are not only a focus of the industry anymore. The recruitment of private households to participate in SEMIAH's Norwegian pilot reveals a growing interest in Demand Response among the residents.

Turning energy consumption upside down

In the Norwegian SEMIAH pilot, the participants are part of testing how energy consumption in private households can be adapted to the amount of energy produced in the grid instead of vice versa. Numbers from the Norwegian utility company and member of the SEMIAH consortium, Agder Energi Nett, show that the aim of recruiting 100 households for the pilot has been reached by far. Currently, 290 Norwegian households are on the waiting list for participating.

More sustainability in the future

The great interest in participating in the SEMIAH pilot discloses a positive attitude among private households towards changing their normal consumption patterns. The support for Demand Response is a step in the direction of integrating more sustainable ways of consuming energy in private households in the future.

SEMIAH has been nominated at the European Utility Week to compete in Engerati's Energy Management Award.

About the award:

The Energy Management Award seeks to recognise a project with a significant role in the sustainable management of energy, from an industrial, commercial or public space. A project that proves the successful implementation of energy management/ services programmes in the day-to-day business.

The award criteria are:

Show significant reduction in energy use

Show a trickledown effect into the supply chain

Economic viability as a direct impact to the bottom-line

A positive impact to the community or society

Must be located in and/or run in Europe

(Courtesy of Engerati)

Everybody is welcome to register and vote for their favourite project, and we at SEMIAH appreciate every vote we get.

László Erdődi, Ph.D. in Computer Security and lector at the University of Agder is scheduled to give a presentation on ethical hacking and how it can be used for system protection.

Taken from the E-16 programme:

Together with the growing of the IT cyber incidents become a great threat as they occur every day all over the world. The presentation gives an insight into ethical hacking by showing efficient methods based on the attacker’s mindset. Besides the practical approach, the most actual questions, challenges and research perspectives will be pointed out. For more information click here

The presentation will be held on Wednesday, September 7, hall C, room 1 at 11:05 a.m.

On Monday September 12 and Tuesday September 13, HES-SO hosts the Semiah consortium meeting in Sion, Switzerland.
Following the meeting, a technical workshop will be held on Wednesday September 14 aiming to focus on backend integration and the beginning roll out of the Semiah pilot projects in Norway and Switzerland.